Can't save fla file

I have a template which I bought from template monster. Of course, as always with their templates, it is all show and no go, I get them just for the fonts, graphics, and sound effects mainly. I spent ~ 6 hours re-making it into a functioning site, removing their dead links and non-functioning components and adding in my own. I also spent a good deal of that time customizing colors, text, etc.

I test the file regularly... about every 15 to 30 minutes, by ctrl-enter publishing it. I finally realized how long it had been since I started working on the thing, and needing an extended break I went to save the fla. And flash froze on me. Before it saved... it just warned me the fla was going to be updated to the newer version of flash, if I want to keep the old version 'save as' blah blah blah, as always. And when I clicked 'save', it locked up.

I had to force quit the program after about 5 minutes of waiting and praying it would save; I rebooted, ran a virus and adware scan, everything was fine. I opened up the fla file, and of course there was nothing of my work. I checked the swf file, and it was the latest version I had test published. I tried to just save the unedited fla file that I got from the template, and of course it locked up again.

Another reboot, and I immediately kill all nonessential programs, load in a different fla file, it saves fine. Make some unneeded changes, it saved fine. changed it back to normal, it saved fine. load in the template, and it crashes again.

Despairing for my lost 6 hours of work, I search the web and come across swf decompiler by *******. I download it, install it, and decompile my swf file. And it seems to be the latest version, but all the naming conventions are screwed, the text is off in many places, and... guess what... after I spent an hour or two fixing all of that, the decompiled file locked up the machine when I tried to save it!

So it must be something in the component library, I am thinking, right? I go through and delete all nonessential elements, images I had or was going to replace, sounds I didn't need, etc. I try to save this stripped down version of the fla file, and still, no luck!!!

All my other fla files work normally, but this one, the original or the decompile of my heavily edited one, just lock up the program when I try to save or save as or save and compact. I can test the file and publish the file just fine, bu that does me no good unless I want to work on it for ~ 20 hours straight with no saves, and then never edit it again!!!

I contacted template monster and they suggested I download a new version of the template. So I sucked it up and tried, and it does the same thing! And they won't refund my money.

I now have about $50.00 and 10 hours of my time invested into an swf file (and a decompiled fla of that swf), and a base template, neither of which I can save!

Has anyone run into anything like this before? Any suggestions on how to fix it? Any other decompilers out there that may do a better job of accurately pulling the things (especially filters on my text layers, which are always dropped, and text size and sometimes font faces) out of the swf file to work with? And which might give me an fla file I can save?!?!?

I would appreciate any help out there!

have you tried the save as method and saving to the same version of flash it was originally made in? that sucks man!

This is the only post which is exactly describes my situation.
I have been able to save my fla on nov 23. since then NOTHING.
Have tried everything. Can't get my flash cs4 to save. As you I downloaded the original file again, but nothing.
Have you found the solution to it ??
save me, i'm dying here...THX

Hi guys,

Anybody found the solution here. I have been stuck for over a week.
exact same situation. Original template gives the same problem too.

thank you !

I never found a solution per se, but I came up with a work-around...

What I did was to again, go through the template's library with a fine-toothed comb and cull out (deleted) every image, graphic, movie, sound, text clip, etc. which I did not need. This was somewhat unnecessary, but it helped me with the next two steps.

I then copied the entire library to a new, blank fla and saved that, it saved just fine.

Next I copied the root timeline (all frames on the root), one layer at a time, into that new fla file. And it saved just fine.

Thus, I had a new fresh version of the template which saved fine.

I never did figure out what exactly the issue was!

Hey man,

Thanks for the quick reply.
i did what you said. I was able to import my complete library, but only half the layers. Flash hangs every single time I try to copy the other layers (one by one, edit-timeline-copy frames = not responding).

Have you had this too ? Thx

I did have it slow down to a crawl where I *thought* it froze on one of the layers, but just as I was getting ready to kill it and reboot, it finished copying that layer... how long have you waited on it?

Also, I don't know if this was a factor or mere paranoia that did nothing, but I had made sure I closed out every program besides flash, killed every unnecessary process, and for the copying portion, I even closed out all other fla files (I saved and closed the new file after I pasted in a layer, then re-opened it after I copied the next layer). I have a fairly beefy setup, but it is not the best machine there is so I wasn't taking any chances.


If that doesn't help, I would advise skipping the problem layers that are hanging, and after you have everything else copied out, and delete everything from the old one as soon as it is saved in the new one... not sure if it will help or not, but I figure the slimmer the file is, the less flash has to process when thinking about copying that data out.


Another thought I just had... about a month after I had this issue, that particular hard drive crashed on me (even with backups I lost a ton of stuff)... so it may have been an early warning sign of the failing hard drive. You may want to run some scans and check for bad sectors and such. It may be completely unrelated, but it is a thought.

On my xp machine the save was never performed. waited 1 h, then 2h , then left it saving overnight. but in vain.
So, I ended up installing flash on another computer with Win7 on it.
Runs ok, but saving the file takes about 30 minutes.
I think I will have to live with that.

Anyway, thanks for the help dude. I appreciate.
Cya